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MEMORANDUM RM-5163/2-ISA/ ARPA MAY 1968
(ORIGINAL EDITION: MARCH 1967)
PREPARED FOR:
ORIGINS OF THE INSURGENCY IN SOUTH VIETNAM, 1954-1960: THE ROLE OF THE SOUTHERN
VIETMINH CADRES
J. J. Zasloff
THE OFFICE OF THE ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF DEFENSE/INTERNATIONAL SECURITY AFFAIRS AND THE
ADVANCED RESEARCH PROJECTS AGENCY
Rand SANTA MONICA, CA. 90406
MEMORANDUM RM-5163/2-ISA/ ARPA MAY 1968
(ORIGINAL EDITION: MARCH 1967)
ORIGINS OF THE INSURGENCY IN SOUTH VIETNAM, 1954-1960: THE ROLE OF THE SOUTHERN
VIETMINH CADRES
This research is supported by the Department of Defense under Contract DAHC15 67 C 0143, monitored by the Assistant Secretary of Defense (International Security Affairs), and by the Advanced Research Projects Agency. RAND Memoranda are subject to critical review procedures at the research department and corporate levels. Views and conclusions expressed herein are nevertheless the primary responsibility of the author, and should not be interpreted as representing the official opinion or policy of ISA, ARPA or of The Rand Corporation.
APPROVED FOR PUBLIC RELEASE; DISTRIBUTION UNLIMITED
J. J. Zasloff
Rand SANTA MONICA, CA. 90406
-iii-
FOREWORD
This report is one of a series of Rand studies that examine the
organization, operations, motivation, and morale of the Viet Cong and
North Vietnamese forces that fought in South Vietnam.
Between August 1964 and December 1968 The Rand Corporation conduct
ed approximately 2400 interviews with Vietnamese who were familiar with
the activities of the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese army. Reports of
those interviews, totaling some 62,000 pages, were reviewed and released
to the public in June 1972. They can be obtained from the National
Technical Information Service of the Department of Commerce.
The release of the interviews has made possible the declassifica
tion and release of some of the classified Rand reports derived from
them. To remain consistent with the policy followed in reviewing the
interviews, information that could lead to the identification of indi
vidual interviewees was deleted, along with a few specific references
to sources that remain classified. In most cases, it was necessary to
drop or to change only a word or two, and in some cases, a footnote.
The meaning of a sentence or the intent of the author was not altered.
The reports contain information and interpretations relating to
issues that are still being debated. It should be pointed out that
there was substantive disagreement among the Rand researchers involved
in Vietnam research at the time, and contrary points of view with
totally different implications for u.s. operations can be found in the
reports. This internal debate mirrored the debate that was then current
throughout the nation.
A complete list of the Rand reports that have been released to the
public is contained in the bibliography that follows.
(CRC, BJ: May 1975)
-iv-
Bibliography of Related Rand Reports
For a description of the Viet Cong Motivation and Morale Project
and interviewing process, the reader should first consult W. Phillips
Davison, User's Guide to the Rand Interviews in Vietnam, R-1024-ARPA,
March 1972.
These reports can be obtained from The Rand Corporation.
RM-4507/3
RM-4517-1
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RM-4692-1
RM-4699-1
RM-4703/2
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Viet Cong Motivation and Morale in 1964: A Preliminary Report, J. c. Donnell, G. J. Pauker, J. J. Zasloff, March 1965.
Some Impressions of the Effects of Military Operations on Viet Cong Behavior, L. Goure, August 1965.
Evolution of a Vietnamese Village -- Part I: The Present, After Eight Months of Pacification, R. M. Pearce, April 1965.
Evolution of a Vietnamese Village -- Part II: The Past, August 1945 to April 1964, R. M. Pearce, April 1966.
Some Impressions of Viet Cong Vulnerabilities: An Interim Report·, L. Goure, C.A.H. Thomson, August 1965.
Political Motivation of the Viet Cong: The Vietminh Regroupees, J. J. Zasloff, May 1968.
Viet Cong Motivation and Morale: The Special Case of Chieu Hoi, J. M. Carrier, C.A.H. Thomson, May 1966.
Observations on the Chieu Hoi Program, L. W. Pye, January 1966.
Some Findings of the Viet Cong Motivation and Morale Study: June-December 1965, L. Goure, A. J. Russo, D. Scott, February 1966.
Some Effects of Military Operations on Viet Cong Attitudes, F. H. Denton, November 1966.
A Profile of Viet Cong Cadres, W. P. Davison, J. J. Zasloff, June 1966.
A Profile of the PAVN Soldier in South Vietnam, K. Kellen, June 1966.
Evolution of a Vietnamese Village -- Part III: Due Lap Since November 1964 and Some Comments on Village Pacification, R. M. Pearce, February 1967.
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RM-5163/2
RM-5239-1
RM-5267/2
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-v-
A Look at the VC Cadres: Dinh Tuong Province, 1965-1966, D.W.P. Elliott, C.A.H. Thomson, March 1967.
Origins of the Insurgency in South Vietnam, 1954-1960: The Role of the Southern Vietminh Cadres, J. J. Zasloff, May 1968.
Insurgent Organization and Operations: A Case Study of the Viet Cong in the Delta, 1964-1966, M. Anderson, M. Arnsten, H. Averch, August 1967.
Some Observations on Viet Cong Operations in the Villages, W. P. Davison, May 1968.
Two Analytical Aids for Use with the Rand Interviews, F. Denton, May 1967.
The War in the Delta: Views from Three Viet Cong Battalions, M. Gurtov, September 1967.
Viet Cong Cadres and the Cadre System: A Study of the Main and Local Forces, M. Gurtov, December 1967.
Viet Cong Logistics, L. P. Holliday, R. M. Gurfield, June 1968.
An Evaluation of Chemical Crop Destruction in Vietnam, R. Betts, F. Denton, October 1967.
A Statistical Analysis of the U.S. Crop Spraying Program in South Vietnam, A. J. Russo, October 1967.
A View of the VC: Elements of Cohesion in the Enemy Camp in 1966-1967, K. Kellen, November 1969.
Viet Cong Recruitment: Why and How Men Join, J. C. Donnell, December 1967.
The Viet Cong Style of Politics, N. Leites, May 1969.
Inducements and Deterrents to Defection: An Analysis of the Motives of 125 Defectors, L. Goure, August 1968.
The Insurgent Environment, R. M. Pearce, May 1969.
Volunteers for the Viet Cong, F. Denton, September 1968.
Pacification and the Viet Cong System in Dinh Tuong: 1966-1967, D.ll.P. Elliott, W. A. Stewart, January 1969.
The Viet Cong in Saigon: Tactics and Objectives During the Tet Offensive, V. Pohle, January 1969.
RM-5848
RM-5849
RM-5850
RM-5851
RM-5852
RM-6131-1
RM-6375-1
-vi-
Document~ of an Elite Viet Cong Delta Unit: The Demolition
Platoon of the 514th Battalion -- Part One: Unit Composition and Personnel, D.W.P. Elliott, M. Elliott, May 1969.
Documents of an Elite Viet Cong Delta Unit: The Demolition
Platoon of the 514th Battalion -- Part Two: Party Organi
zation, D.W.P. Elliott, M. Elliott, May 1969.
Documents of an Elite Viet Cong Delta Unit: The Demolition
Platoon of the 514th Battalion -- Part Three: Military
Organization and Activities, D.W.P. Elliott, M. Elliott,
May 1969.
Documents of an Elite Viet Cong Delta Unit: The Demolition
Platogn of the 514th Battalion -- Part Four: Political
Indoctrination and Military Training, D.W.P. Elliott,
M. Elliott, May 1969.
Documents of an Elite Viet Cong Delta Unit: The Demolition
Platoon of the 514th Battalion -- Part Five: Personal
Letters, D.W.P. Elliott, M. Elliott, May 1969.
Conversations with Enemy Soldiers in Late 1968/Early 1969: A Study of Motivation and Morale, K. Kellen, September 1970.
Rallying Potential Among the North Vietnemese Armed Forces,
A Sweetland, December 1970.
-vii-
PREFACE
Since July 1964, The RAND Corporation has been in
quiring into the motivation, behavior, and morale of
Viet Cong and North Vietnamese soldiers fighting in South
Vietnamo A series of Memoranda based mainly on inter
views with prisoners and defectors has focused on both
strengths and weaknesses of the Communist side, and has
included suggestions for increasing the effectiveness of
the South Vietnamese and American war effort.
The present Memorandum deals with the group of revo
lutionary cadres who were left behind in the South after
the cease-fire of 1954 to keep intact, and eventually to
expand, the surviving Vietminh organization. For a pro
file of these "stay-behinds" and an account of their
experience under the Diem regime the author draws mainly
on 23 interviews that RAND's field team conducted with
captives and defectors from among lower- and middle-level
cadreso He goes on to speculate on how that experience
is likely to influence today's Communist leaders as they
weigh the possibilities of negotiation and settlemento
The author, a RAND consultant with special competence in
Southeast Asia, has spent much time in Vietnam in con
nection with this and earlier projects, and has published
several studies based on the interviews he himself helped
conducto
This Memorandum was originally issued in March 1967.
-ix-
SUMMARY
After the cease-fire in Indochina, most military men
of the southern insurgency, in keeping with the Geneva
Agreement, were "regrouped" in the North. The Vietminh
cadres who remained in the South after 1954 consisted of
two groups, who are designated for the purposes of this
report the active and the inactive. The active responded
to the discipline and control of the Vietminh leaders, who,
after Geneva, had in~talled themselves in Hanoi. The
inactive cadres had taken up civilian life and were no
longer connected with the Vietminh organization. While the
active accepted the direction of their Communist leaders,
the sentiments of the inactive toward the Vietminh ranged
from loyalty, through neutrality and indifference, to down
right hostility.
The tasks of the active cadre were limited to the realm
of organization and propaganda, and violence or sabotage
initially had no part in them. Eventually, however, these
civilian "stay-behinds," together with the military veterans
who returned from the North, were to constitute the steel
frame of the Viet Cong, or, as it came to be called in 1960,
the National Liberation Front.
This Memorandum examines the role of the stay-behinds
in the preparation of the present insurgency. Interviews
conducted by RAND teams with 23 cadres from that group --
17 prisoners and 6 defectors who came into government
hands between May 1963 and August 1965 have been used in
this composite picture of the experiences, activities, views,
and motives of lower- and middle-level cadres who helped re
construct the Vietminh apparatus in the years 1954-1960.
-x-
Aware of the potential threat from former members of
the Resistance, the Diem government in 1955 embarked on a
program designed to identify and control Communist enemies.
As enforced at the local level, especially in the rural
areas, its victims perceived it as a campaign of terror.
Many former Vietminh and their families, whether they were
active in the organization or had returned to the private
sphere and lost contact with the Vietminh, found themselves
harassed and persecuted, often the victims of arbitrary and
spiteful local enforcement agents. Although the campaign
did great damage to the Communist apparatus and its excesses
may not have been intended by the central authorities (they
were not evident in Saigon), it cost the Diem regime the
goodwill and trust of many potential supporters among for
mer Vietminh. In the climate of indignation that it created,
the active Communists among the stay-behinds who survived the
campaign, reinforced by the returning regroupees, were
able to appeal readily to the previously inactive and rein
volve them in the movement, and to build up a country-wide
revolutionary organization with an accompanying intelligence
network. Their experience in the war against the French
enabled them to make an effective contribution to maintain
ing and expanding the "secret zones" -- base areas in which
recruits were indoctrinated and trained, and which later
served as military jumping-off points.
This Memorandum speculates on the extent to which
the fate of the stay-behinds in the years 1954-1960 may
affect the thinking of Southern insurgent leaders today
as they view the-prospects of a settlement of the war.
As they look back on the treatment of Vietminh veterans
under Diem, they are likely to regard future promises of an
-xi-
amnesty with cynicism. The Communist leaders in Hanoi,
in turn, no doubt would be skeptical about any guarantees
of amnesty for their supporters in the South that might
be written into a settlement.
Their knowledge of the fate of Southern cadres be
tween 1954 and 1960 and the ferocity of the present war
would probably lead them to expect a bloodbath for their
Southern supporters if the Saigon government were to gain
complete control. Taking this thought a step further,
they may fear that any solution leaving South Vietnam
under GVN control would meet with the strongest objec
tions from important segments of the Southern cadres.
These cadres,, convinced that any such settlement would
be a threat to their lives, might at that point go so far
as to disobey Hanoi's instructions. Thus, negotiating
such a settlement with the Saigon government might strike
the Northern leaders as risking the loss of their most
valuable political investment: control over the Viet
Cong movement in the South.
The author does not intend to convey by these specu
lations the impression that the Communist leaders cannot
be persuaded to negotiate or to abandon their military
struggle for the control of the South. He intends his
thoughts to underline the fact that the impact of the
earlier settlement on the Communists may have an important
bearing on a future peace.
/
-xiii-
CONTENTS
FOREWORD • •• • • • • • • • • • • • • .••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• • • • · • • • • iii
PREFACE • ..••••• · • · • · • • • • • · • · •..•••••••. • • • • • • • · · • • • • • • • • • · · • • • · vii
S~Y • •••••••••••• • • • • • • • • • ••••••••••• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • · • • ix
Section I. INTRODUCTION ••••••...•••••.•...••••.•••.••...•..••• • · • • • 1
II. POST-GENEVA ATTITUDES OF THE VIETMINH CADRES, 1954-1955. 5
III. THE DIEM GOVERNMENT AND THE SOUTHERN VIETMINH CADRES.... 9
IV. BUILDING THE INSURGENT ORGANIZATION: THE "SECOND RES I STANCE''. . . . . . . . . • . . . . . . • . . . . . . . . . . • . • • • . . . • • . . • . • 15
V. OBSERVATIONS ON THE "STAY-BEHINDS" AND SOME POSSIBLE IMPLICATIONS FOR THE FUTURE.......................... 25 Weakness of Diem's Policy Toward Vietminh Cadres..... 25 The Southern Vietminh Cadres: An Effective
Revolutionary Apparatus............................ 28 Implications for the Future.......................... 30
Appendix 1. BIOGRAPHICAL DATA ON 23 SOUTHERN VM CADRES.............. 33 2. CHARACTERISTICS OF THE SAMPLE OF 23 SOUTHERN VM CADRES.. 35
-1-
I. INTRODUCTION
Following the armistice in Indochina that resulted
from the Geneva conference of 1954, most of the Vietminh
political and administrative personnel who had partici
pated in the eight-year struggle against France remained
in South Vietnam. The military men of the southern insur-
gents -- an estimated 90,000 were ordered by their
political leaders to regroup in North Vietnam under the
Vietminh leadership that established itself in Hanoi. In
the next few years, the cadres of civilian "stay-behinds"
-- whose number, though probably substantially smaller
than that of the military personnel who went North, is not
known -- kept the Vietminh organization in South Vietnam
intact. Beginning in 1959, they were rejoined by "regroupees,"
the soldiers who had gone to the North and were now being
reinfiltrated. Together, these Vietminh veterans constituted
the "steel frame" of the expanding insurgent organization in
the South, now known as the Viet Cong (VC) or National
Liberation Front (NLF).
This Memorandum examines the role that the cadres1 who
had stayed behind in South Vietnam played during the prep
aration and at the beginning of the current insurgency.
1The term "cadre" is used in this paper to designate any member of the Vietminh or Viet Cong who occupies a position of leadership in the political or military structure which would be the military equivalent of squad leader or above.
-2-
In exploring the origins of this "Second Resistance," as
the Vietminh cadres term it, the author has focused upon
the period from the cease-fire in 1954 to the year 1960,
which marked the beginning of widespread, coordinated VC
attacks against government positions throughout South
Vietnam. Events will be described from the perspective of
lower- and middle-level cadres who participated in the
reconstruction of the Vietminh apparatus during this period.
The data for this study are drawn from interviews
with twenty-three former cadres (six defectors and seven
teen prisoners), all of them members of the Viet Cong who
had defected or been captured between May 1963 and August
1965. The interviews were conducted by RAND research teams
in South Vietnam as part of a continuing inquiry into the
subject of Viet Cong motivation and morale. 2 Most of the
men interviewed had worked at the district and village
level. The highest cadre in the sample appears to have
been a province-level propaganda specialist who directed
the work of 120 subordinates. Only four were in the mili
tary -- two in district (local) forces and two in the
village militia -- and one of these men had had an adminis
trative assignment in his unit. The others were civilian
cadres, of whom seven had been involved in propaganda
activity, six in fiscal or economic affairs, and three in
Party committee work, while two were intelligence agents,
2Appendix 1 gives brief biographical data on the men interviewed, identifying them by numbers 1 to 23. ~The relevant number, in parenthese, follows each quotatLon from an interview that {s cited in the text.) Appendix 2 is a breakdown of the sample by various pertinent characteristics.
and one was a photographer. The twenty-three cadres in
this sample operated in sixteen of South Vietnam's forty
four provinces.
Because of the small sample, it is important to note
some of the limitations in the following analyses. Draw-
ing upon the twenty-three interviewees, the author has
attempted to construct a composite picture of the condi
tions that faced Vietminh personnel who stayed behind in
the South and of their role in reorganizing the insurgency.
The data, however, do not provide an adequate basis for
estimating the number of persons who experienced the repres
sive conditions described in the following analysis or the
extent to which these conditions applied equally to all
areas of South Vietnam. Unfortunately, no reliable esti
mates are available as to total number of Vietminh who stayed
in South Vietnam; the number who remained in an "active"
status; the number who eventually joined the Viet Cong; or
the positions these persons hold in the movement today.
Furthermore, being largely lower-level cadres, the
men interviewed did not generally have access to communist
leadership circles in either South Vietnam or Hanoi; at
best, some of them had attended meetings at which they
were briefed by higher echelons. Assessments of communist
leaders' intentions in the following pages, therefore, are
speculative, for they are based principally on information
that the interviewees provided.
In the course of their long service with the Vietminh
and the Viet Cong, the cadres had absorbed a great amount
of communist political indoctrination. Nineteen had joined
the Vietminh before 1950 (although not all of them served
continuously until 1954), and sixteen of the total had more
than five years' service with the Viet Cong. Eighteen
-4-
of the twenty-three had been Party members; four of these
stated that they had been expelled. Given the length of
their service and the high proportion of Party members in
the group, it is not surprising that many of the inter
viewees' statements were colored by communist slogans.
Nevertheless, from the mosaic of their individual stories
there emerges an unusually clear picture of the conditions
they faced in the South after partition and of their role
in reorganizing the insurgency. Unlike the regroupees,
whose denunciations of the Saigon regime reflect mainly
what they were told in the North, where they lived throughout
the first half of Diem's rule, these southern cadres spoke
vividly from personal experience. Ranging in age from 30 to
53 at the time of the interviews, they tended to be spon
taneous and relaxed in telling about their life during the
first six years after the Geneva Conference. In citing
their grievances·against the Saigon government of that
period -- as all of them did -- prisoners did not need to
worry about offending their captors, as the Diem regime
had been repudiated by all subsequent governments of South
Vietnam.
The following is a composite of the remarkably uni
form accounts of prisoners and defectors, loyal as well
as discredited Party members, the hard core and the dis
affected, in which they described the fate and the acti
vities of former Vietminh personnel after the cease-fire
in the South.
-5-
II. POST-GENEVA ATTITUDES OF THE VIETMINH CADRES, 1954-1955
The Vietminh cadres who remained in the South after
1954 consisted of two groups, who are designated for the
purposes of this report the active and the inactive. The
active responded to the discipline and control of the
Vietminh leaders, who, after Geneva, had installed them
selves in Hanoi. The inactive cadres had taken up civilian
life and were no longer connected with the Vietminh organi
zation. While the active accepted the direction of their
communist leaders, the sentiments of the inactive toward
the Vietminh ranged from loyalty, through neutrality and
indifference, to downright hostility.
The loyal among the inactive were proud of their
service in the Vietminh, which they regarded as a patriotic
movement responsible for liberating Vietnam from French
rule. They looked forward to the general elections in 1956
that were to reunify Vietnam, and they hoped for a Vietminh
victory. The inactive who felt neutral toward the Vietminh
had returned to their villages after the cease-fire to
rejoin their families and take up a normal civilian life.
Indifferent to politics, they were relieved to be able to
disengage themselves from Vietminh activities and resume
civilian work. Among them were those who had been unen
thusiastic about their service in the Vietminh but had
adjusted themselves to it and been promoted to cadre rank.
Some had gone into the Vietmin:h ranks because of compulsion,
social pressure, or the adventuresome impulses of youth,
rather than from conviction. Many had joined to express
their opposition to French colonial rule, and, with the
-6-
departure of the French, the reason for their participation
had disappeared. As in any nation, a large number in the
neutral range consisted of people who were simply prepared
to obey whatever authority was in power. They had sub
mitted to colonial control while the French still exercised
power; they served the Vietminh once its authority was
established in their villages; if the government in Saigon
could make its power prevail, they would obey it in turn.
Finally, there was a small group that was unsympathetic,
and occasionally hostile, to the Vietminh. Some had seen
members of their families killed by the Vietminh; some
had had their land confiscated in the course of the Vietminh
programs for land redistribution; some, especially among
those classified as members of the landlord or bourgeois
class, had suffered various forms of discrimination, in
dignity, and persecution at the hands of Vietminh authori
ties. Still others had joined the Resistance for nation
alist reasons and resented the communist domination of the
movement.
The active were ordered by the Vietminh leadership to
return to their home provinces and were instructed, it
appears, to limit their activities to organizational and
propaganda tasks. There is no evidence in our interviews
that violence and sabotage were part of their assignment
in the early months after Geneva. Low-level cadres were
told to campaign discreetly for the elections which under
the Geneva Agreement were to be held in 1956. A loyal
cadre, who had served the Vietminh from 1947 to 1954, told
of receiving the following guidance:
-7-
We were given training about the Geneva treaty. We were instructed to work normally with the peasants, to earn a living and to explain to them the clauses of the treaty. We pointed out that general elections would be held in 1956. (8)
Another cadre described his tasks as distributing leaflets,
hanging posters, and organizing meetings to promote the
election. (9) Still another reported that the Party
secretary in a province capital had assigned him "to work
as a core cadre exhorting the population to demand negotia
tions with North Vietnam for a general election." (1)
One cadre spoke of his village "Movement for the Protection
of Peace," which distributed petitions demanding general
elections, trade relations with North Vietnam, and peace.
(17)
In July 1955, President Ngo Dinh Diem announced that
he would not agree to the holding of elections under ex
isting circumstances, as "the regime of oppression" estab
lished by communist control of the North made free elec
tions impossible.3 The active as well as the loyal in
active among southern Vietminh cadres were disappointed
to learn that elections would not be held; they had been
taught, and apparently believed, that the Vietminh would
be victorious in such a contest. Their disappointment,
however, did not match in intensity the discouragement and
anger of the regroupees in the North, for whom the suspen
sion of elections meant that they could not return home.
Those in the South, although at home, were apprehensive
1 Allan B. Cole (ed.), Conflict in Indochina and International Repercussions: A Documentary History, 1946-1955, Cornell University Press, New York, 1956, pp. 226-228.
about their fate. Recalling events of that period, one
cadre said:
While the North was demanding a general election, those in the South who did were arrested and accused of being Communists. That worried me. (17)
Another cadre reported:
Before 1956, I still believed very strongly that the general elections would be held. The International Control Committee was still in Vietnam. But in 1956, our hopes for the elections were all lost. We started to worry very much and we went into hiding. (8)
-9-
III. THE DIEM GOVERNMENT AND THE SOUTHERN VIETMINH CADRES
In his effort to consolidate the power of his government throughout Vietnam, President Diem crudely attempted to eliminate the nationalist appeal of the Vietminh, which he saw as a challenge to his authority. Mass meetings were organized in villages throughout the countryside to promote loyalty to the government, and villagers were called upon to condemn the Communists. One witness described the rally in his village as "a solemn ceremony of denunciation of communist crimes, [at which] the Vietminh flag was publicly torn." (16)
The government in Saigon saw itself threatened -- not without justification -- by Communist Party members, and it therefore launched a campaign to identify and control them. Though this policy apparently was conceived in Saigon as a means of separating active Vietminh agents from the population, in its implementation it avalanched into what
-
the former Vietminh, and other segments of the population as well, perceived as a "campaign of terror" against anyone who had once been associated with the Resistance. Not only the active Party members, but large numbers of the inactive, whether or not they were still loyal to the Vietminh, were harassed, persecuted, arrested, and in some cases executed. In many areas this local oppression also included the socalled "Vietminh families," that is to say, those who had sons among the regroupees in the North or relatives who were involved in insurgent activities in the South. Not only were local officials and police agents frequently incompetent at singling out the active Vietminh agents, but many were also
-10-
arrogant and venal in the execution of their tasks, and
by their offensive behavior generated sympathy for the
Vietminh. Many of these local officials had served the
French colonial administration prior to independence, and
some now used their power to settle old scores with former
Vietminh enemies. The military forces enlisted in this
campaign against the Vietminh often committed misdeeds that
ranged from the stealing of fruit and chickens from vil
lagers' gardens to wanton killing and plundering. Para
military forces, such as the Civil Guard and, especially,
the local militia known as the Self Defense Corps, were
frequently guilty of brutality, petty thievery, and dis
orderly conduct.
The campaign by which the Saigon government sought to
neutralize the Vietminh network included instructions to
local officials to classify the population into three
categories, which would permit the screening out of the
enemies. Category A was for Party members considered the
most dangerous; Category B, for Party members of lesser
importance; and Category C, for loyal citizens. It is
not clear from the interviews what disposition the central
government may originally have envisaged for those who were
placed in Categories A and B. These twenty-three interviews
show, however, that many former Vietminh cadres, even
inactive ones, considered this program one of savage per
secution. In villages where the local officials were
corrupt, they frequently used their power over former
Vietminh cadres to extract bribes and payoffs, and to
exploit their victims in other schemes for personal profit.
A cadre from Central Vietnam described the situation in
his village as follows:
-11-
Former Party members of both Categories A and B were concentrated in two large houses. All the rooms of these houses were crowded with men. They were supplied with food by their own families. They were prevented from visiting their houses even for a while during the floods. . . .
Contracts for the construction of a school and the offices of the village committee were given by the government but had to be subject to a bid. All the bidders were either relatives of the village chief or his own men.
We, one hundred and fifty men strong, had to work without salary as carpenters and masons for these projects. Afterwards, we were gradually released. Those whose families could bribe the village chief could go home first. In any case, all of us were released, but many were put under house arrest again when the first rumors of VC activities were heard. (16)
In areas where the persecution was particularly in
tense, Vietminh cadres were fear-stricken. One of them
gave the following account of the terror in his village:
My village chief was a stranger to the village. He was very cruel. He hunted all the former members of the Communist Party during the Resistance to arrest and kill them. All told, he slaughtered fourteen Party members in my village. I saw him with my own eyes order the killing of two Party members in Mau Lam hamlet. They had their hands tied behind their backs and they were buried alive by the militia. I was scared to death. (18)
Of those who felt most seriously threatened some fled
to Saigon and other large towns, where they did not find
the same persecution that pervaded so many of the
villages. One cadre who had fled to Saigon said: "There
was more democracy there. In order to arrest somebody,
there had to be charges, papers, and evidence against
-12-
him." (7) Another cadre had gone to Saigon expecting to
find security there in anonymity. He said:
In 1956, after the refusal to hold elections, a great many cadres were arrested, and the ones remaining were extremely afraid. Anybody who had been in the Resistance was captured on sight. I fled to Saigon. Nobody knew I was a former Resistant there. I was trying to get away from my friends. (8)
Many former Vietminh cadres have been able to live
peacefully in Saigon. In fact, the Saigon government in
cludes high officials who formerly served the Vietminh.
The relative security that Saigon offered suggests that
the excesses committed against former members of the Re
sistance in the provinces may have been a product of the
overzealousness, incompetence, or venality of local offi
cials rather than a deliberate policy of the central govern
ment. The victims, however, did not only blame the local
officials -- though these were the principal object of
their hate -- but the Diem government as well. As one
cadre put it, "It was Diem's fault for not controlling down
to the village level." (7)
Some cadres in Central Vietnam who found the pressures
on them unbearable fled to the nearby mountains. There they
joined other former Vietminh and helped form the nucleus of
the Viet Cong agents who later spread their influence from
these regions. One such cadre gave this account:
In 1956, the local government of Quang Nam started a terrorist action against old Resistance members. About ten thousand persons of the Resistance Army were arrested, and a good many of them were slaughtered. I had to run for my life, and I stayed in the mountains until 1960. I lived with three others who came from
---13-
my village. We got help from the tribal population there. (13)
Many of those arrested apparently no longer had any affiliation with the Vietminh. One cadre, who maintained that he had not served the Vietminh since he was expelled from the Party in 1951, told this story:
I was a [GVN] hamlet chief for twenty days, in August 1954, and then I was dismissed by the village chief. I worked at my farm until 1956, when there was an order from the province to arrest all Communist Party members in Categories A and B. I was in the B Category. (18)
After a year in prison, he returned to his vill~e to live and then was recruited into the insurgency. Another cadre, who claimed he did not rejoin the insurgents until 1960,
reported the following:
I joined the Resistance in 1954 and attended a training course designed for workers and peasants. When the war was over, I returned to my village and lived with my family. In 1957 I was arrested and held for three years in the My Tho and Go Cong jails. Not only was I arrested, I was also tortured. (23)
Our data do not permit us to make a reliable esti
mate of the numbers who were imprisoned or killed in this
campaign against Vietminh personnel. It is clear, however, that the campaign, while it hurt the Vietminh organization in South Vietnam badly, also created conditions which surviving Vietminh agents were able to exploit in
rebuilding the insurgent organization.
-15-
IV. BUILDING THE INSURGENT ORGANIZATION: THE "SECOND RESISTANCE"
When President Diem announced in August 1955 that the
elections for reunification would not be held, the Vietminh
leaders in Hanoi vociferously denounced his decision. Once
they realized that they would not be able to gain the
southern segment of Vietnam through elections, as they had
hoped to do when they signed the Geneva Agreement, they
apparently decided to achieve that aim by subversion.
Their goal throughout remained constant: It was to secure
political control over a unified, independent Vietnam.
In its effort to subvert the Saigon government, the
Vietminh leadership used as the framework for a newly
constituted insurgent apparatus the Vietminh cadres who
had remained in the South; from 1959 on, these were re
inforced by regroupees sent back from the North.
In the course of an anti-Vietminh campaign of the
Diem regime, many of the movement's personnel were
imprisoned and executed between 1955 and 1959. A Vietminh
veteran who had been a Party member since 1936 characterized
that period as among the most difficult years of the entire
revolution. (12) Some of the Vietminh cadres, however,
escaped the net thrown out to trap conspirators and worked
assiduously to rebuild the insurgent organization. The
personal story of a Vietminh cadre in our sample shows the
method used to recruit followers in one village:
I resumed my activities for the Communists in 1956. From 1954 to 1956, all the Communists regrouped to the North. In 1956, the Viet Cong cadres returned clandestinely to the village and reestablished their organizations. They
-16-
made propaganda and educated the villagers on their aims and policies. They praised me for all the contributions I had made to the Resistance, and urged me to join their ranks to fulfill my duty towards the nation. I became self-awakened and joined them. (14)
In the newly-constituted and expanding organization,
this cadre became a member of the district Party Committee,
servingas head of its information section. Assigned to
penetrate the information service of the Government of
Vietnam (GVN), he secured a job as a government information
official in a district of Central Vietnam, and used this
position with the GVN to work as an agent of the Viet Cong
and build up its local organization:
I enlisted people in the VC ranks and collected information which I channeled to the VC. I made propaganda for the VC, tried to build up their prestige, and sabotaged GVN activities. My status remained legal. I investigated [for the VC] and closely watched the families whose members had regrouped to the North, or the dissatisfied elements, or the persons who were sympathetic to the VC, in order to enlist them in the VC organizations. If I found them to be reliable, I would assign small tasks to them at the start. Afterwards, I would entrust them with more important and difficult missions. (14)
The above statement shows how the active cadres went
about singling out segments of the rural population with
acute grievances against the Saigon government. Those
"Vietminh families" and the inactive Vietminh cadres
who were being harassed by the local GVN officials were
highly susceptible to VC appeals. The network of propa
ganda and recruiting agents extended down to the hamlet,
-17-
the lowest administrative level in South Vietnam. An
account by one interviewee gives the flavor of propa
ganda activities as they were carried on in many areas
of South Vietnam:
I became a hamlet cadre at the end of 1957. My work was simple. I received news and instructions from the village cadres and transmitted them to a few other persons. At the time my village was still under GVN control and I had to work underground.
I informed the villagers about such news as a demonstration by the inhabitants of a nearby village. I also urged my friends and acquaintances to demand more schools, more fertilizers, and more drugs, or to demand a general election and normal trade relations with North Vietnam, or to demand exemption from the ten piaster tax paid on each Ancestor Worship ceremony. This was called "The Struggle for the People's Living." (17)
An important part of the active cadres' organizing work
between 1955 and 1959 was carried on from base areas, also
called "secret zones" by the Vietminh, which had been
regions of Vietminh strength since the struggle with the
French. Many of these areas -- for example, Zones C and D,
the U Minh Forest, and the Plain of Reeds -- were marshy
and heavy with jungle undergrowth; they had few roads and
were difficult for GVN military forces to penetrate.
Though life was arduous in these regions, there were enough
fruits and berries, fish in the streams, and wild life to
sustain the cadres who remained in them. They offered some
measure of security to new recruits, who could there be
trained and politically indoctrinated for their insurgent
tasks. As the zones expanded with the influx of new
personnel, they served, from 1960 on, as jumping-off areas
-18-
for attacks against government positions. One cadre
recalled:
In 1956, I left my wife and children and hid in a mountainous area. We called it "secret zone 100-K." The government has not seen it to this day. I collaborated with others. We cut wood and left it for the inhabitants who respected us for this and gave us food and shelter. Life was very hard but no one complained. Little by little our group was transformed into an organization whose primary mission was to start bases for propaganda in the area. We were not armed. By every means, above all propaganda, we tried to win the people. (10)
Another cadre, who had rejoined the movement in 1956
and worked from a base area, gave this account of his
unit's increasing belligerence, therein describing a pro
cess that was taking place throughout the southern
countryside:
From 1956 to 1959 we lacked the right conditions: on the one hand, there were successive government troop operations; on the other hand, we cadres lacked means. Our small number of cadres had to live secretly in remote zones. We dared not mix with the population, nor even make ourselves known outside of the cell, or the committee. We were like fish out of water.
Toward the end of 1959 and the beginning of 1960, we received orders to enlarge the field of our activities, to attack military posts, to arouse the conscience of the people, to make ourselves known publicly. Two comrades and I, with the help of three volunteers from the militia to help us as spies, successfully attacked the village militia and seized one sten gun and five rifles. In February 1960, profiting from this success, we penetrated the village and made contact with P ... , who joined us with a typewriter. We, the fish, were now in the water. (9)
-19-
Thus, while the crackdown by the Diem regime had dam
aged the organization of the remaining Vietminh members in
the years 1955-1959, the active cadres who survived the per
secution now were able over time to tap the larger group of
those inactive Vietminh who, in their growing anger at the
regime, were susceptible to recruitment into what the cadres
called "the Second Resistance." Beginning in 1959, the
still small group of active cadres was reinforced by the
regroupees being infiltrated from the North. Together, these
two former Vietminh elements formed the "steel frame" of a
new insurgent organization, which in 1960 began to call
itself the National Liberation Front and to expand at a
remarkable rate by recruiting the younger generation of
southern peasants.
During those early years of the insurgency, from 1955
to 1960, the active Vietminh cadres assigned great importance
to person-to-person appeals. Some recruiting cadres developed
great skill in what defectors late~ called "sweet talk," the
persuasive arguments which recognized the grievances of the
candidate. Two powerful appeals, often intertwined, were
to nationalism and social justice. The main theme was that
"American imperialism" had replaced colonialism in Vietnam.
As one cadre put it, "The Americans took advantage of the
collapse of the French to put the country under a new,
more modern, tyranny, an economic and political, rather
than military, tyranny." (10) The American imperialists
were denounced, furthermore, for supporting the "feudalism"
of the Diem regime, which was described as a puppet of the
United· States. The denunciations of the Diem regime were
focused upon people's grievances over their mistreatment at
the hands of haughty and corrupt local functionaries and
exploited examples of gross misbehavior of local
-20- .
security officials. Appeals that capitalized on injustices
in the immediate surroundings appear to have had wide
acceptance among new recruits.
A cadre who had rejoined the Vietminh in 1957 revealed
how the nationalist appeal was put to him:
First, a Front cadre came to see me. He said that we were supposed to be living in a peaceful and unified country, by then; that the government of Ngo Dinh Diem under the advice of Americans prevented general elections and trade relations between the North and the South. He said if I wanted my country to be at peace and unified, I should join the Front. (17)
Another, who had been in prison from 1957 to 1960 and had
been tortured, was persuaded to rejoin the Vietminh because
of his resentment against his tormentors in prison and his
bitterness toward the local functionaries who mistreated
him upon his return to the village:
I was set free at last. When I came back to my hamlet, the way the hamlet policeman treated me infuriated me again. Whenever I reported to him, as required, his first act was to curse me. I felt depressed and hated the GVN.
I made up my mind to join the Front. I wanted to find the reason for my existence. I could not bear the oppression of the GVN officials on the villagers and on myself. The propaganda of the Front seemed quite right to me, and I also believed that the Front would win over the GVN. I did not know much about Communism. I followed them because I felt that the society needed a revolution. I was young and willing to fight for an ideal, and the Front, in my eyes, represented the ideal indeed. (23)
-21-
One interviewee, who still spoke in the style of a
loyal communist cadre, told this story:
In October 1956, I had a visit from a cadre who came from the mountains to see me. He told me that he had learned that I had been an active cadre in the Resistance and asked me to join him. I thought, on the one hand, that the region where I lived was not secure and that, if I joined him, I would risk arrest. On the other hand, my love for the people and the revolution had remained strong. The actions of the government authorities violated both the Geneva Agreements and human conscience. I accepted his proposition after several days of reflection. (10)
Our composite story of the fate and activities of the
former Vietminh was enriched by the testimony of this same
cadre, who revealed how a loyal Communist perceived the
growth of his organization:
From the period after Geneva until 1958 or 1959, there was a denunciation campaign against the Communists and a large majority of the former Resistants were tracked down. Only a minority were able to survive the measures that the government had resorted to. The people's groups were completely disorganized. Add to this the government's military campaigns against the "secret zones."
But you should know that during this period the people believed that the Revolution still lived. In 1959 and 1960, the Liberation movement reasserted itself and developed for several reasons:
---Former cadres renewed their relations and showed the masses that the men of the Revolution were not all dead. They exposed the misdeeds of the government authorities. Our program to kill the collaborators and destroy the traitors appealed to the psychology of the people and we created our bases among the population.
-22-
---Victories were won by the popular troops over the government forces.
---From 1961 on [regroupees actually began returning in 1959--JJZ], we had the return of a great number of cadres regrouped to the North in 1954. (10)
Recruitment for the insurgency between 1954 and 1960
was not, of ceurse, limited to former Vietminh cadres,
although these were the most likely candidates, but ex
tended also to other dissatisfied villagers. Discontent
was undoubtedly widespread, and the active Vietminh cadres
were successful in mobilizing some of it for the growing
insurgent apparatus. This is how one respondent summed up
this revolutionary activity:
From 1957 to 1960 the cadres who had remained in the South had almost all been arrested. Only one or two cadres were left in every three to five villages. What was amazing was how these one or two cadres started the movement so well.
The explanation is not that these cadres were exceptionally gifted but that the people they talked to were ready for rebellion. The people were like a mound of straw, ready to be ignited. (7)
He believed that the history of the Front would have been
different if the government had adopted other policies:
If at that time the government in the South had been a good one, if it had not been dictatorial, if the agrarian reforms had worked, if it had established control at the village level, then launching the movement would have been difficult. (7)
The above evaluations fail to reveal the coercive
side of Vietminh recruitment methods. The communist
-23-
organization in Vietnam has always combined persuasion
with coercion, and former Vietminh members who were re
luctant to rejoin found that they now faced intimidation
from the Vietminh as well as from the government. Particu
larly after 1959, when the insurgents' strength permitted
them to proceed more and more boldly, propaganda agents
and recruiting cadres paid visits to GVN-controlled
villages to bring back new adherents. The story of the
poor peasant who, like so many of the rural population,
seemed inclined to accommodate himself to whatever power
controlled his area, is indicative of the fate of many
former Vietminh members. He lived in a GVN-controlled
village near the U Minh forest, a long-time communist base
area, and, despite his complaints about the arrogance of
the military and the corruption of the government officials
in his area, he accepted a minor hamlet post in 1959.
This led him into difficulty with the Vietminh:
At the end of 1959, the Front came to arrest me because I was a sub-hamlet chief. They bound my eyes~ took me to the field, said I was a criminal, that I worked for the Nationalists, that I forced the villagers to carry out orders, that I made trouble for them. They did not beat me. They said: "Now we have warned you. We fight for peace. We are returning to abolish the dictatorial Diemist power. You, brother, work for this power. We forbid you. If you continue, you will commit a crime." There were three or four men. One had a rifle -- he stood to the side. Another did the talking. He spoke to me for two hours. I made promises and they released me. (5)
Not long after this encounter, the Front killed the chief
of the neighboring hamlet, and our informant soon joined
the movement.
-24-
In contested areas, VC agents were even more ruthless
in the pressure they applied to former Vietminh cadres who
had not yet joined their ranks. A case in point is the
story of a former Party member who lived near the Plain
of Reeds, an area long controlled by communist forces.
The visit of an old friend from the Resistance who urged
him to go back into the movement placed him in a dilemma:
I was between the hammer and the anvil. Had I refused to follow the advice of my friend, the Party would not have spared me. My property would have been confiscated and I would perhaps be condemned for treason and "eliminated" by the VC. On the government side, I was being sought by the police (because I was a former Party member) and couldn't leave for town without an identity card. My only chance to escape arrest was to accept the risk of fighting against the government. (2)
He pointed out that there were six or seven others who
were as reluctant as he to rejoin the communist movement,
but that none could resist the pressure. Thus, by . shrewdly combining persuasion and coercion, the Vietminh
were able to rebuild an insurgent organization that could
move to the offensive in 1960.
-25-
V. OBSERVATIONS ON THE "STAY-BEHINDS" AND SOME POSSIBLE IMPLICATIONS FOR THE FUTURE
A revolution, to be successful, presupposes, among
other important conditions, (1) some measure of social
discontent (due to economic grievances, social inequality,
or unfulfilled nationalist aspirations), and (2) a revo
lutionary apparatus that can effectively operate in that
milieu and is able to mobilize the people, and especially
the discontented, for a movement powerful enough to sub-4 vert the government. As the foregoing shows, the Vietminh
"stay-behinds" played an important part in fulfilling the
second requirement by providing an organization of disci
plined, committed personnel who worked zealously to enlist
the larger population in the revolutionary cause. Although
we have not here been able to deal in detail with all the
factors that entered into the creation of a revolutionary
climate, there can be little doubt that it existed, and
that the Diem government's treatment of former Resistants
contributed to it.
WEAKNESS OF DIEM'S POLICY TOWARD VIETMINH CADRES
Another look, therefore, at the effect that the Saigon
government's treatment of the Vietminh "stay-behinds" had
upon the growth of the insurgent apparatus may point the
way to more effective counterinsurgent practices in the
future.
4 Such other assets for promoting successful revolu-tions as the availability of weapons and aid from an outside source have not been dealt with in this paper.
-26-
(1) The Diem government had reason to see a threat
to its power from the active Vietminh cadres who remained
in the South. However, its program for identifying and
controlling them was woefully deficient. It did not
effectively discriminate between active and inactive
Vietminh, who were frequently lumped together by incompe- .
tent or corrupt local officials ready to persecute both cate
gories with equal ruthlessness. Outside the cities, the
government provided among former Vietminh cadres -- the
active as well as the inactive -- with no feasible alterna
tives to opposition. (That decent treatment to former
Resistants in the provinces would have served the govern
ment's cause is borne out by the fact that in Saigon many
Vietminh veterans gave their loyalty to the new government
and worked for it willingly and peacefully.) Moreover,
though many of the active Vietminh agents were apprehended
and either imprisoned or executed, the GVN's administrative
system, especially at the level of the local functionaries
and police agents, was not efficient enough to capture all
of them. And whatever damage this campaign was able to
inflict upon the insurgent apparatus was at least partly
compensated for by the infiltration of regroupees from
the North and, even more so, by the climate of moral indig
nation in which the surviving active Vietminh agents were
able to win new recruits.
(2) The mistreatment of Vietminh veterans brings
sharply into focus the great damage that a new government
may suffer through the inadequacy of its local officials.
The attitude of the Vietnamese peasant toward the central
government -- as is characteristic of rural populations
in emerging nations -- is shaped less by what the men in
-27-
the capital decree than by the behavior of local officials.
The incompetence, arrogance, and venality of selfish local
functionaries was so widespread in rural Vietnam that the
Diem administration was greatly compromised. There were,
of course, many local officials who were honest and
dedicated public servants, but the undesirable elements
were numerous enough to become the source of significant
protest. The Saigon government, which was badly misin
formed about conditions in the count~yside, was at fault
in not adequately checking the abusive behavior of these
men.
(3) The conduct of the GVN security forces, especially
of the Self Defense Corps and the Civil Guard, was another
severe liability to the central government, as the testi
mony of the Vietminh veterans reveals. The brutality,
petty thievery, and disorderliness of which the forces were
frequently guilty was a source of great annoyance to local
communities, and the Vietminh cadres who promised to elimi
nate the security forces and local officials responsible
for these indignities found many sympathetic listeners.
(4) The new government in Saigon had come to power
with certain inherent historic disadvantages. The Vietminh,
having gained widespread popular respect as the nationalist
force responsible for expelling French rule, was charging
the Saigon regime with being simply a continuation of
colonial rule, and cited the fact that many of the new
government's military and civilian personnel had served the
earlier colonial government. It was important for the Diem
government, therefore, to disabuse the southern population
-28-
of those concepts and to build up an image of a truly
nationalist regime that legitimately represented all the
Vietnamese people. However, the treatment that was meted
out to so many Vietminh veterans detracted from such an
image: Those associated with the Vietminh had reason to
resent the new government, while others, who respected
the Vietminh as a nationalist movement, came to question
the motives of the regime.
THE SOUTHERN VIETMINH CADRES: AN EFFECTIVE REVOLUTIONARY APPARATUS
The active Vietminh who had remained in South Vietnam
after 1954 were a group who conformed well to Lenin's
prescription for the makers of revolutions: They were a
small group of dedicated men who, at the risk of their
lives, were committing all their time and energies to
making the revolution succeed. When the Vietminh leaders
decided to conquer South Vietnam by subversion, they did
not have to repeat that phase in their earlier struggle
against France when they recruited and trained the personnel
that became the core of their organization. The Vietminh
cadres in South Vietnam provided a ready-made apparatus
with long experience.
(1) Given their former political and administrative
functions with the Vietminh, these "stay-behinds" had
qualities that were exceptionally appropriate to the task
of rebuilding a revolutionary organization. The active
cadres included experts in propaganda and recruiting who
had learned to operate as underground agents in a hostile
environment. In the South Vietnam of the late 1950's,
they were not outside agents; living in their home
-29-
provinces, they were familiar with the local situation
and were regarded by the populace as native sons. Although
the repressions of the Diem regime had depleted their
numbers, the surviving active cadres, trained to accept
Party discipline and heavily indoctrinated during their
service with the Vietminh, were reinforced by the Party in
their hostility to the Saigon regime, and they added to
their numbers by recruiting the inactive as well as others
with like grievances.
(2) Distributed as they were over all the provinces
of South Vietnam, the Vietminh cadres provided a network
of agents for a leadership seeking to collect intelligence
and rebuild a political organization. The active cadres
made a great contribution to future political and military
operations by maintaining and expanding the "secret zones"
in which new recruits were offered security and given
training and political indoctrination. These base areas
proved extremely important in 1960, when the Viet Cong
mounted its offensive.
(3) The propaganda themes of nationalism and social
protest, so assiduously spread by the Vietminh propagandists
and recruiters, were shrewdly adapted to local grievances.
The Communists, in alleging that the Americans had replaced
the French as the imperialist rulers, took advantage of
the susceptibility of the Vietnamese to anticolonialist
appeals. Poor peasants who had built up a great resentment~.
against local officials and against the government in
Saigon whom these officials represented did not find it
psychologically difficult to accept the myth of the
foreign invader. The tendency to blame all shortcomings
of the national regime on neocolonialism is a common
phenomenon in nations that have recently emerged from
colonial rule, and in Vietnam it was especially strong.
Even at a time when Americans were not visible in the
countryside, the villagers could see that the Vietnamese
army was equipped with American weapons, and they were
told that it was generally being supported by U.S. funds.
Few of them had either the education or the opportunity
for personal experience with which to test the statements
of propagandists and recruiters regarding the empire
building role of the Americans in Vietnam. This, and the
"venality" of the Saigon government, became the main themes
that recruiters used to engage once more the inactive
Vietminh who had fled to the mountains and the base areas,
to approach those who were now living in relative immunity
in Saigon, and to work on former Vietminh prisoners who
were generally resentful about the treatment they had
suffered under the southern regime.
IMPLICATIONS FOR THE FUTURE
Though our data do not show how high the Vietminh who
stayed behind in the South rank in today's National Liber
ation Front or how many are still active in the movement,
these veterans undoubtedly constitute an element of leader
ship within South Vietnam. It may be worthwhile, therefore,
to speculate on how their experience from 1954 to 1960
could influence their thinking about a possible settlement
of the present war.
After the signing of the Geneva Agreement of 1954, the
Vietminh veterans returned to their homes with the dual
promise of an amnesty and elections. But there were no
elections, and the amnesty was a farce in the eyes of those
-3i-
who are now in the Viet Cong. As a result, those former
Vietminh who remain strongly committed to the NLF are likely
to be suspicious of any settlement which would bring to
power any but a communist government. They have reason
both because of their experience after 1954 and the ferocity
of the present war to regard promises of amnesty with
cynicism, and to fear for their lives if their side is not
victorious. The argument that the leadership in communist
North Vietnam treated its opponents with even greater bru
tality than did the government in the South is likely, if
anything, to reinforce the fears about their fate in a
future settlement. This does not rule out the possibility,
of course, that other considerations could induce them to
accept a compromise or even simply to stop fighting; but
it does point up their probable skepticism toward any
proposals for settlement.
A related question is how the experience of the
Vietminh veterans in South Vietnam is likely to affect the
thinking in Hanoi, the center of command of the southern
insurgency. Knowledge of the fate of southern cadres
between 1954 and 1960, combined perhaps with recollections
of their own behavior toward segments of the population in
North Vietnam that they regarded as hostile, is likely to
make the leaders an Hanoi skeptical about any guarantees
of amnesty for their supporters in the South that would be
written into a settlement. They would probably expect a
bloodbath for their supporters in the South if the Saigon
government were to gain complete control.
This, in turn, leads us to the next step -- a more
tentative one -- in our speculations on how the perception
of past events may affect the chances for a future settlement.
----~--.---
-32-
Conceivably, the leaders of North Vietnam believe that
any movements toward a settlement which would leave the
GVN in control of the South would be unacceptable to
important segments of their southern cadres. These
cadres, out of fear that they would be sacrificing their
own lives in a settlement, might disobey Hanoirs instruc
tions. Thus, entering into negotiations under such
circumstances might mean to Hanoi that it would be risking
a highly valued political investment: its control over
the Viet Cong movement in the South. On the other hand,
the northern leaders might feel they would obtain compliance
with any settlement they negotiated from their NVA regi
ments and from the well-disciplined main force units of
the Viet Cong. In this case, any remaining resistance
from other southern Viet Cong probably could be handled by
American and South Vietnamese fighting forces. Still, the
idea of abandoning many of its southern supporters in such
a manner could hardly appeal to the DRV.
Again, the above observations are not meant to convey
the impression that communist leaders cannot be persuaded
to negotiate or to abandon their military struggle for
control of the South. They are intended to underline the
fact that the impact of the earlier settlement on the
communists may have an important bearing on a future peace.
Appendix 1
BIOGRAPHICAL DATA 91! 23 SOUTHERN VK CADRES
Year of Province of Year of Entry Entry Into Province of Party Date of Capture Ro. Statua Birth Birth Social Clau into VK Front RAnk/or Function oeeration Member of Defection 1. POW' 1923 Saigon Middle 1945 1955 Agent in Province Town Underground Coamittee Binh Thuan Yea Hay 1964 2. De f. 1919 Long An Rich farmer 1945 1961 Financial Conaittee of District Long An Yes Hay 1963 3. POW' 1920 J:ien Phong Small landowner 1945 1955 Photographer Kien Phong Yes July 1964 4. POW' 1934 Kien Giang Poor farmer 1952 1955 Squad Leader Kien Giang ? Aug. 1964 s. POW' 1924 Bac Lieu Poor far.er 1948 1959 Adjutant and Political Officer Bac Lieu No Oct. 1964 6. POW' 1905 Nam Dinh (RVN) Poor farmer 1948 1963 Purchaaer Binh Long Yeo Sept. 1964 7. POW' 1910 Dinh Tuong Bourgeoh 1945 1961 . Finane ial Secretary. Propaganda Cadre Dinh Tuong No Hay 1964 I. POW' 1917 Gia Dinh Poor trader 1947 1961 Propaganda Cadre Gia Dinh Yea Sept. 1%4 9. POW' 1930 )(len Phong Landowner 1945 1956 ! Secretary of Diotrict C01aittee Kien Phong Yea June 1964 ) I !AI. POW' 1923 Bac !Hnh (l'IVIf) Rich 1946 1956 Intelligence Cadre Saigon Yeo June 1964 w 11. POW' 1929 Go Cong Rich land.....,er 1945 1957 late lligence Cadre Go Cong ? Sept. 1963 w 12. POW' 1908 Ha llaa (l'IVIf) ? 1936 1955 Training and Propaganda at Dlatrlct Rach Gla Yea Oct. 1964 I u. POW' 1928 Quanll N- Middle far.er 1954 1960 ·Co .. C~nder, Local Force Quang Nam No Dec. 1964 14. De f. 1932 Blnh Dlnh ? 1949 1956 , Hq. Dhtrlct Propaganda C011111lttee Binh Dlnh Yes 1964 u. POW' 1918 lllnh Dlnh Poor fat"Mr 1945 1964 I Platoon Leader Binh Dlnh Yea March 1965 16. POW' 1930 Phu Yen Poor farmer 1945 1961 Village Financial Cadre Phu Yen Yeo Jan. 1965 17. POW' 1929 Gla Dlnh Middle farmer 1948 1957 Chief, Youth Propaganda Section Gla Dlnh Yes Nov. 1964 18. POW' 1912 Phu Yen Middle farmer 1947 1963 Treasurer, Econ.,.,. Section Phu Yen Yes Nov. 1964 19. Def. 1931 )(len Giaq Middle far.er 1949 1961 Chief of Staff Gia Dinh Yes Apr. 1965 20. POW' 1922 Uen H- Middle farmer 1949 1960 Propaganda Cadre Kien Hoa Yes Apr. 1965 21. De f. 1925 Vinh Binh ? 1946 1963 District Vinh Binh Yeo Apr. 1965 22. De f. 1935 Dinh Tuon11 Poor fanaer 1952 1964 Deputy Secretary, Village Dlnh Tuong Yeo July 1965 23. Def. 1931 Dinh Tuong Middle far.er 1954 1960 Financial Cadre Dinh Tuong Yes 1965
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Appendix 2
CHARACTERISTICS OF THE SAMPLE OF 23 SOUTHERN VM CADRES
1. Status
Defectors 6 POWS 17
Total 23
2. ABe at time of ca12ture or defection
30 31-35 36-40 41-45 46-50 51-55 56-60
3. Province of birth
Saigon Long An Kien Phong Kien Giang Quang Nam Phu Yen Vinh Binh Bac Lieu
4. Area of operation
Binh Thuan Long An Kien Phong Kien Giang Bac Lieu Binh Long Dinh Tuong Gia Dinh
1 1 2 2 1 2 1 1
1 1 2 1 1 1 3 3
2 7 3 5 2 2 2
Dinh Tuong Gia Dinh Go Cong Binh Dinh Kien Hoa Nam Dinh (North VN) Bac Ninh (North VN) Ha Nam (North VN)
Saigon Go Cong Rach Gia Quang Nam Binh Dinh Phu Yen Kien Hoa Vinh Binh
3 2 1 2 1 1 1 1
1 1 1 1 2 2 1 1
;:
5. Social class of parents
6.
Poor farmer Rich farmer Middle Bourgeois Rich landowner Landowner Small landowner Poor trader Not given
Totals
Date of entry into VM
1936: 1 1945: 8 1946: 2 1947: 2 1948: 3 1949: 3 1952~ 2 1954: 2
POWs
5 1 5 1 1 1 1 1 1
17
Defectors
1 1 2
2
6
,/
Date of entry into Front
1955: 4 1956: 3 1957: 2 1959: 1 1960: 3 1961: 5 1963: 3 1964: 2
7. Date of caEture or defection
POWs Defectors
1963 Jan-June 1 July-Dec 1
1964 Jan-June 4 1 July-Dec 9
1965 Jan-June 3 2 July-Dec 2